Comic-Con: GRIMM Panel Recap

The cast and creators of Grimm, the mish-mash procedural monster fairy tale cop show, took to Comic Con to discuss the making of the hit show and to preview its upcoming second season. Amongst the panel: Writer/Creators David Greenwalt & Jim Kouf, director Norberto Barba, executive producers Todd Milliner & Sean Hayes, and cast members David Giuntoli, Bitsie Tulloch, Silas Weir Mitchell, Bree Turner, Russell Hornsby, Reggie Lee & Sasha Roiz. For a recap of the panel, hit the jump.

Here are the highlights from the panel:

On the origin of Grimm: Todd Milliner – “I was in the shower thinking —- ‘What’s in the public domain?”

Kouf and Greenwalt were quick to note that the show isn’t based solely around Grimm tales. All works of fiction are source material for the show. Greenwalt cited the episode ‘Tarantella’ as an episode not based off the Brothers Grimm, but the Japanese folktale The Goblin Spider. Weir Mitchell added that it was that episode where he fully embraced the show. “You’re going to have someone throw up in someone else’s mouth. They’re going to let us do that.” he joked “It was then [that I knew] we are really going for it.”

Jim Kouf stated that he had two concrete plans at the start of the series: 1) that Nick’s thought-to-be-dead mother would return at the end of the season and 2) that they would reveal Hitler to be a Blutbad. “Who’s a bigger wolf than him?”

The creature (Wesen) names are conjunctions of German words. E.g. “Blutbad”: Blut (Ger.) = blood; bad (Ger.) = bath. Thus the phrase roughly translates to ‘blood bath’. Silas Weir Mitchell joked that the faux German conjunctions are just a challenge from the writers to see how difficult they can make it for the actors. The cast even has a dialect teacher on staff to help with the appropriate pronunciation and meaning.

The entire cast played coy as to what will occur in the second season. Russell Hornsby offered only that “Hank [will] try to get his sanity back. Try to come to terms with what exactly he saw.” When pressed on whether or not he would eventually figure out Nick’s secret, Hornsby curtly teased: “You’ll just have to wait and see.” Reggie Lee joked that he just wants his character Sergeant Wu to finally get a first name. When asked what he believes Wu’s first name is, Lee responded quickly: “Lu – Sergeant Lu Wu.”

The creators and producers were equally tight lipped. When asked how Hank and/or Juliette will respond to Nick’s nighttime monster hunting, Greenwalt countered “Who’s to say Hank will find out or that Juliette will remember?” However Greenwalt did offer that many of the questions posed in the first season – How did Nick’s mom survive? Why was someone or something trying to kill her? What’s the deal with those gold coins? – would be answered fairly early in the upcoming season.

The panel ended with an exclusive preview of the first act of the second season premiere. The episode opens with a guard discovering blood trickling out of a mysterious freight container. He calls the police and together they open the container up. Things do not end well for them, as a striped sharp teethed carnivorous Wesen (perhaps modeled off a Sabretooth tiger) jumps the poor men and tears them limb from limb. From there — the episode immediately cuts to the end of the first season where Nick and his dead-but-not-really mother reunite. She explains to Nick she only faked her death to protect him. Nick wants answers – Did Aunt Marie know all this time she was still alive? Yes. He asks if his father is still alive. No – he died in the crash. Then who was the body the police found with his father? A friend – his mother answers – the body so charred up it was impossible to identify. The act ends with the mother-son reunion being interrupted by the police and then by Monroe – who brings potentially devastating news about the state of Juliette’s coma.